


Winter Solstice

by Deifire



Series: Eerie Advent Calendar Challenge [18]
Category: Eerie Indiana
Genre: Future Fic, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-18
Updated: 2015-12-18
Packaged: 2018-05-07 10:35:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5453558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deifire/pseuds/Deifire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>In his home in Eerie, Indiana, thirteen-year-old Simon Holmes wakes up with a start...</em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Winter Solstice

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Eerie Advent Calendar fic challenge.
> 
> Prompt: hibernate.

In his home in Eerie, Indiana, thirteen-year-old Simon Holmes wakes up with a start. He can’t remember what pulled him out of his dream, and doesn’t know if he can attribute the lingering feeling of dread to what he was dreaming about or something in the waking world. 

Simon gets up and pads around the house, first checking on his parents—mercifully still passed out in the living room—and then on his younger brother, who is sitting up in bed, blinking at him. Harley can’t say what woke him up, either, but Simon can tell he’s bothered by it. Simon stays with him until he’s asleep again, snoring gently, before finally crawling back into his own bed and closing his eyes.

In the house next door, Edgar Teller wakes up, puts on his glasses, and looks at the clock before he reminds himself that it’s the weekend, and there’s nowhere he needs to be. He crawls back under the covers and snuggles closer to Marilyn, who grabs his hand. He was having the strangest dream, but for the life of him, can’t remember what it was.

In a room in that same house, where he’s definitely not supposed to be and will deny ever having been in the morning, Dash X wakes himself with a small cry. The marks on the back of his hands are burning. He thrashes against Marshall, who holds and soothes him until the feeling passes and he’s able to sleep once more.

In the bedroom in a house some ways down the street, Janet Donner wakes from a recurring nightmare about garbage men she thought she’d stopped having years ago. She checks on her family in every bedroom, then tiptoes downstairs into the living room and turns on the TV. The flickering images on the screen reassure her that the world is still there as she drifts back to sleep.

A few streets over, Ernest Wilson wakes with a shout. He’s surprised to find his arms are in the air above his head, hands positioned as if he’s been pressing up against a giant lid in his sleep. He’s less surprised when his brother appears in his doorway a few moments later. They decide to stay up and watch bad movies together, but are dead to the world again before they make it past the first one’s opening credits.

A few streets over from that, Phil McNulty opens his eyes. His nightmare wasn’t the one about bills he can’t pay, or endless rows or corn, of the shame and terror he felt the day he realized he’d become his own father, but it used the same doors as all of those. He reaches for his wife and holds her close as they both drift off again.

All over Eerie, people touched by the weird wake unsettled from dreams they can’t quite remember, then fall back into a deep sleep they’ll wake from feeling no more rested than when they went to bed.

Up on Wolf Mountain, near the entrance to a certain cave, select powers that be and members of the Eerie-Yoshizaki Consortium do not sleep. 

Instead, they make the sacrifice, chant the chants, and perform the customary rituals to make sure the thing that lives in that cave continues to hibernate for the next hundred years. When they’ve finished, they break apart and begin to head their separate ways, not quite daring to look at each other.

Chisel claps Radford on the back with one blood-stained hand. “Had to be done for the good of us all,” he says.

“I know,” Radford replies miserably. He hates it, but this beyond mere good luck and low taxes.

“When’s breakfast?” the man in the sequined jumpsuit asks as he walks past them.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Summer Solstice](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12743178) by [miss_nettles_wife](https://archiveofourown.org/users/miss_nettles_wife/pseuds/miss_nettles_wife)




End file.
